The #1 rule to social media is to be social. For businesses, it can often be a difficult premise to adhere to this simple rule, and we often see businesses criticized for having thousands (or millions) of followers and only following 5 people back.
It’s something we think about from time to time as we manage our @threedeep Twitter account. Someone follows our business on Twitter and we wonder if it’s worth our time to follow them back. Some people will advocate that you automatically “follow back” everyone who follows you, but that’s not always practical and brings your account in some spammy areas.
How does a Businesses decide who to follow on Twitter?
We’ve created this flowchart which may offer some insight into how we evaluate whether or not your business should follow someone on Twitter.
The chart starts with a simple question:
Does this account tweet in English?
Unless you are well versed in that language (as well as everyone else that manages your account), it’s in your best interest to just let them be.
Does your account know this Twitter account professionally?
This should be a simple question if you’re a business. Are you in business with this person or organization? If so, you have just found an additional venue with which to communicate with them and can also help to cross-promote each other.
Does your account know this Twitter account personally?
For example, does your brother blog frequently about photography and his blog feeds into Twitter? Or does your college roommate have a Twitter and posts amusing tweets?
Is that content valuable to your business?
Perhaps you can rationalize your brother’s account, but unless you’re a comedy business, your roommate will have to be reserved for a personal account.
Is this account local?
For us at Three Deep, we may follow businesses that have no relevance to our business, however this business still may be of value to us, such as Barrio, where we often enjoy their tacos. Another option is that the person behind the account may be someone seeking a position with Three Deep, so following them would be helpful for them to message us if they need to follow up on a posting.
Do they tweet regularly? excessively?
These terms are relative to you and the amount of accounts you follow. We say that more than 5 tweets an hour is excessive, but that is something you must determine for your account. Also, if the account tweets less than once a week, it is doubtful that you will glean any knowledge from them unless you can target the exact time that they will post a message.
Is their content original?
At Three Deep, we follow many social media people. However, if their tweets are all filled with the latest Mashable news, then it would make sense to just follow Mashable. It’s certainly fine that accounts want to retweet people, but make sure that there is a healthy balance of original and retweeted content. Again, these are just guidelines that we use to determine who we follow for our organization’s Twitter.
We welcome your thoughts and what parameters you use for those you choose to follow.
It’s funny how in a country with hundreds of millions of people, the world can seem really small through Social Media. This past Thursday, two members of Three Deep – Brandon Smith (aka @bg3dppc on Twitter) and Jeff Sauer (@jeffsauer) attended a gathering of Twitter users in the Twin Cities at an event called the Minneapolis Tweetup.
The event was held at the Bulldog in NE Minneapolis, which is one of the better restaurant/bars in the Twin Cities, and the promise of free food and cocktails made it an event not to be missed.
We met some great people at the event (@kareemy, @ddn, @swineheart, @paulmalenke to name a few) and called a successful event after about 2 hours – and decided to leave the happy hour around 8 PM. After driving home, I logged on to check my Twitter account and noticed some interesting news about the event:
Continue Reading Three Deep Attends Minneapolis Tweetup, Meets Mark Cuban →
We have alluded several times on this blog as to our company’s continued interest in Twitter as a listening channel. While a lot more informal and lightweight than blogs, the channel is a great way to listen to what’s going on over the web. As part of my continued Autodidacticism (I know it sounds dirty, but look it up… it means self educating), I am constantly perusing the Twitterverse to see if I can learn any interesting tidbit, technique or insights into how I can improve my skillset.
As part of my daily monitoring, I subscribe to searches for Twitter hash tags (basically words with a # before them) for several people, industries, events, etc. One of my favorite hash tags is the Web Analytics channel #measure. In addition, I love the stream provided by the newly minted #ganalytics hash tag (those of you who have been on Twitter for a while know that these are much better than the deprecated #wa and #ga tags, which were polluted by SPAM for Washington and Georgia state related tweets). These two streams keep me up to date with any new developments in these areas, and also allow for some new techniques.
Continue Reading Web Analytics Insights Found Through Twitter →
Our company President, Dave Woodbeck, sent the above slide deck to several members of our team this weekend, and I found it worthy of sharing on our blog. I made the executive decision to tone down the actual title of the slide show (what the f**k is social media?) to prevent any misunderstandings from those who read the title and get scared away.
The actual content of the presentation is much less harsh than the title would imply. The underlying theme throughout: you need to join the conversation! You can’t simply ignore the social interactions that are happening around your company, brand, clients, friends, family, etc. While the tactics used to deliver messages may change, social interaction will only become more open and candid. Like-minded individuals will be forming groups, talking, interacting, etc… and those that listen will be the ultimate winners in the social media landscape.
Continue Reading What is Social Media? – Excellent Presentation Social Media →
This SEO question came to me indirectly through Twitter. Three Deep is developing a good relationship with the excellent ladies at the Savvy B2B marketing blog, and in order to keep up with one another, we follow our mutual Twitter updates. When @michellelinn had a question about WordPress (which is my favorite thing in the entire world), I knew I could help. Here’s how it all went down (in true multi-channel fashion):
My website, built on WordPress, is only showing up in Bing (not Google or other search engines). Any ideas on what I can do? Many thanks!
2:18 PM Jul 1st from TweetDeck
Continue Reading SEO Q&A – Search Engines Can’t Find My WordPress Site →
Yesterday 8 members of Three Deep attended the Online Marketing Summit in Minneapolis, and several team members decided to live “tweet” the event. This was first for many of us, and the results were some great interactions with fellow online marketers, occasionally witty commentary, and a great foray for Three Deep into the Twitterverse. Tweets are included in chronological order for readability.
threedeep: See you all at the Online Marketing Summit in Minneapolis Tomorrow! Let us know if you’d like to meet up with Three Deep.
The chart starts with a simple question:
threedeep: 
3DEmailMarCom: 
